


The Living Past

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Being Friends with Your Ex Again, Character Study, Gen, Mage Stuff, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, Purple Hawke, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 04:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12719613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: Fenris follows a rumor to Skyhold, where he meets any number of strangers who remind him of lost friends and old enemies, and considers the possibility of a second chance.





	The Living Past

**Author's Note:**

> I've gone back and forth a bit on the relationship tags, because this is a story about Fenris more than it is about any one of those relationships, but at the same time, they're all an important part of this story? (I didn't intend Varric to be in this story at all. He's a huge part of it. These things happen.) 
> 
> This is also not an endgame Fenris/Hawke story - it's unrequited - but ultimately I decided it's still important enough to the story to get the tag. Still, I want to have truth in advertising.
> 
> Background ships include Bull/Dorian and Hawke/Merrill.

“Fenris! Holy shit.” 

The familiar shout cut through Fenris’s baffled scrutiny of the Skyhold courtyard; a moment later, pounding feet, and Varric skidding to a halt next to him. “I thought you were on the other side of the Waking Sea,” he said, reaching up to clap Fenris’s back. He did it slowly, giving Fenris a moment to pull away from the touch if he chose; Fenris smiled and clasped his shoulder.

“Varric,” he said. “I was helping a group of former slaves make it to a ship, and it ended up a choice between getting on the ship or ending on twenty-odd swords. All things considered, I thought I’d come south.”

“That’d get you to the coast,” Varric said, sounding deeply unimpressed with that as an explanation. “What brings you from there to the ass-end of the Frostbacks?” He grinned; the Inquisition hadn’t sapped everything from him, then.

“Well, I was most of the way here already,” Fenris said. “Last I heard you’d been dragged off in chains. I thought I’d come see if you were being… treated all right.”

“Aw, Broody, I’m touched,” Varric said, laughing. “I’m fine. The Seeker’s not so bad if you talk to her after lunch, and the Inquisitor’s – something else. Reminds me of some people.”

“I’ve heard she’s twelve feet tall and eats demons for breakfast,” Fenris said. “I gathered you’d been telling stories again.”

“Hah, I’m not the only one,” Varric said. “Not by a long shot. And she’s not twelve feet tall – maybe ten. Come on, I’ll introduce you around.” He waved Fenris up the ramp, past the shining Inquisition banners flapping in the breeze.

“I had… also heard,” Fenris said, looking only at the banners, “that Hawke had been with the Inquisition for a time.”

“Heard that in the Marches, huh,” Varric said, resigned. “I swear, if the mages want to work out spells to travel, they should study gossip. Got a story about that, by the way, in case you decide you want to hate magisters a little more.”

“Sometime, I’m sure,” Fenris said. “Is it true, then?”

“I should’ve known you didn’t come all this way to check on me,” Varric said. “She’s been and gone, I’m afraid. You missed her by a couple weeks.”

“I was concerned for you as well,” Fenris said. “I would likely have come anyhow. Where is she going, if not here?”

“Weisshaupt, actually,” Varric said. “There’s another long story, and you’re going to hate that too. I, uh, sent letters – there’s probably one chasing you around the Marches right now.” The two of them passed under the Skyhold door, into the great stretch of the echoing hall. Something prickled the back of Fenris’s neck, twinged in the markings on his hands. Many things did, lately; many parts of him ached, and the lyrium always seemed to pick it up. Time, catching up with him; more time than he knew, and years of hard use with it. “Carver should be heading after her about now,” Varric continued. “And, uh, Merrill. I’m sure Hawke would be glad to have you at her back.”

“Perhaps,” Fenris said. “But I’m sure they’ll get along without me.”

“You just don’t want to see Merrill again,” Varric said, resigned. “She’s not so bad, you know. She lived with that temptation for what, ten years, eleven now? It hasn’t changed her yet. If you could get past the blood mage thing, I think you’d like her. And she cared about you, and frankly, after the way you treated her, that’s damned impressive.” His voice sharpened on the last.

“Why say this now?” Fenris demanded. “She’s on the far side of the sea, and neither your problem nor mine. We followed Hawke together for years, and you never saw fit to interfere. What does it matter to you if I think she’s a dangerous fool?”

“Yeah, well, maybe I should’ve said something!” Varric snapped, swinging around on one heel. “I tried to stay quiet, let you all snipe at each other, but you know what? That didn’t work out so well for any of us. And Hawke –” He sighed, shoulders slackening as his eyes lost focus, seeing something Fenris wasn’t. Back in Kirkwall Varric always seemed to have his whole focus on whoever he spoke to, on them and their story. “Some shit happened, all right? She all but begged Adaar – the Herald – to let her sacrifice herself. I swear I thought Adaar was going to let her do it, for a moment. If someone else hadn’t been there –” His voice cracked. “She wasn’t like that, in Kirkwall. She never wanted to die. People don’t make that kind of offer when they have something to go back to. If we hadn’t… if I’d… well.” He shook his head. “Too late now, anyway. You’re right, there’s no point. I’m sorry.”

“I… ah.” Fenris almost reached out, let his hand drop back to his side. “However I feel about Merrill, I would not want to see her with Hawke,” he said, turning stiffly away to stare at the Skyhold fire. It was cold, here in the southern mountains; colder than Kirkwall. He held out his hands to the fire, trying to figure out what to say.

“Like that, is it,” Varric said softly, coming to stand next to him. “You know, I suspected.”

“It was brief,” Fenris said, watching the sparks drift in the wild breeze. “Very brief. It was… more than I could handle, at the time. I fled. By the time I realized what I had lost, the scope of what might have been… she had made her choice. There never seemed any point in bringing it up.” He turned his hands over to warm the backs, watched the dim orange light play over the silver. “Frankly, I’m surprised she never told you.”

“Oh, she did,” Varric said, shrug visible in Fenris’s peripheral vision. “She took you at your word, you know, whatever you said to her. Said you didn’t want it, that it hurt too much or something. I figured you were still carrying a torch, but, well, I didn’t think it was my business.”

“It wasn’t,” Fenris said, and then wished to bite back the words, looking at the ghosts in Varric’s face. “But I’m… sure,” he said, syllables clumsy in his mouth, “we’re all grateful for the things you _did_ choose to make your business.” He paused. “I’ve missed Wicked Grace.”

“Thanks, Broody.” Varric cleared his throat; he’d sounded genuinely hoarse. “We’ll get a game going here sometime, I’ve got a few regulars. You might even like some of them. I’ll introduce you to Sera; you’ll either get along like a house on fire or you’ll try to strangle her, but that’s not you, she just has that effect on everyone. Oh, and you’ll never guess who showed up – our old friend Cullen, believe it or not.” He smiled, leading Fenris off towards the gardens, and Fenris let himself be led as he listened.

Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise, that Varric took this weight upon himself. And perhaps… well, Fenris had looked for all of them, since Kirkwall: for Varric’s quick hands fleecing a two-penny game of Wicked Grace, Aveline’s stiff presence next to Fenris in the shadows of a village dance, Isabela’s gleeful snort at the sight of a tree bole grown in yonic folds; but also for Merrill’s off-key humming as she picked her way through the least mucky parts of the ground behind him. Even for Anders’s indignant huff, passing a group of templars on the road. (And always, always for Hawke, for a joke at the least appropriate of moments, for her advice when fear caught at his throat, for the cool wash of her spellwork over his wounds, though the touch of her magic had made him flinch for years.)

All might-have-beens were beyond reach. He spent ten years trying to let the past go, and now he found himself reaching back for those aching Kirkwall years as well. Pointless. There was nothing to do but go on ahead, in company or alone.

It took Fenris a few days to realize that Varric was steering him meticulously through Skyhold, picking out introductions with the fastidiousness of a cook at market. Yes to Lady Montilyet, astonishingly beautiful and apparently of the opinion that a few years at Hawke’s side made Fenris important enough for a guest room; she glossed over his curt awkwardness with a smiling grace that only tied his tongue in further knots. Yes to Sera, who spent five minutes eying him suspiciously, then elbowed him in the ribs and tilted her head at a red-haired dwarf woman crossing the Skyhold courtyard. “Whoof, yeah?” she asked.

“What?” Fenris asked, blinking.       

“ _Whoof?”_ She blinked at him. “Look at her, right? You know, wouldn’t you?” She gestured illustratively, fingers spread on either side of her mouth.

“I… prefer dark hair,” Fenris said, taking a half-step back.

“Pff, you’re looking at her _hair?_ ” She snorted. “Romantic one, huh.” With him thus categorized, she clapped him on the shoulder with a grin and was halfway across the courtyard in the time his twitch was started and stifled. “Well, I’m off to drop some bugs in a bedroll, unless you’d like to come along.”

“Is… that an euphemism?” he asked.

“Only if bugs’re an euphething for creepy-crawlies,” she said, and was gone, leaving Fenris utterly baffled in the shadows of the Herald’s Rest.

Yes to the Seeker, who shook his hand firmly, greeted him with a formality stiffer than her armor, and waved him to the edge of the practice grounds. “There’s a line,” she said, “if you’d like to spar.”

“Another time, perhaps,” Fenris said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His skin prickled. He didn’t wish to answer questions about Hawke all his time in Skyhold, and he had even less wish to try and craft an innocuous explanation for his ability to glow and phase through objects.

“Pity.” She eyed him up and down. “Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind.” It sounded like real disappointment, somewhere in the curt dismissal.

“Some time when I want a few more bruises,” Fenris said, and won a startling smile before she turned away. Fenris retreated to the fence, where Varric had taken up a position propped against a post. Varric grinned up at him.

“Well, that went well.”

“Mmm.” Fenris braced himself against the rail. “She reminds me of someone.”

“I thought so too, until she opened her mouth,” Varric said. “No sense of humor whatsoever, turns out. But you get used to her.”

“I… was thinking of Aveline, actually,” Fenris said, glancing across the yard again at Seeker Pentaghast: short dark hair, straight shoulders, an implacable set to her jaw.  “But yes, I see the resemblance.”

Yes to meeting the Warden Blackwall, a regular at Wicked Grace who took three games and fourteen sovereigns to realize that Varric and Fenris remembered all each other’s tells. No to the dwarf girl with the blacksmith’s muscles who Sera had admired, when they passed her laughing with Sera in the shadows of the wall. Yes to Scout Harding, who complimented Fenris on the make of his sword and chattered happily into his silence while she fletched her arrows. Yes to Commander Cullen, who transparently did not recognize him; Fenris stepped on Varric’s foot to forestall any jogging of his memory. No to the pale boy in the absurd hat who lurked in the corner of the bar, though he was the exact kind of wide-eyed and spindle-thin that Varric always seemed to want to feed.

“Oh, Cole? He eats enough,” Varric said, when Fenris grunted out a question. “These days, anyway. He’s, uh, picky. Shy, too; I’m not sure you’d get along.”

“It must be nice to afford to be picky,” Fenris said, a little grimly. There had been weevils, crossing the Waking Sea; the crunch of shells in his mouth had offered sense-memory glimpses of hunger and youth, the more haunting for their vagueness.

“He’s a special case,” Varric said. “So, you think this beer is actually worse than the Hanged Man’s? Cullen thinks it is, but I don’t know, I think it’s missing something.”

Fenris thought little of it at the time, any more than he thought of Varric’s silence on the people out accompanying the Inquisitor somewhere to the west. The copper dropped on an afternoon when all of Skyohold seemed out in the late winter sunlight, with Fenris braced and Varric lounging against the base of one of Skyhold’s towers. A pale man in a plain tunic made his way across the courtyard, laden with books; the sun gleamed off the top of his head.

“Is that Skyhold’s librarian, then?” Fenris asked, tilting his head at the man’s back. In Kirkwall he’d hated and loved books, been fascinated by all they contained only to find each new sentence seeped into his mind word by word, at the pace of water leaking from a barrel. He’d been drawn to them more since he left the city, not wanting to lose the little skill that he’d earned, nor let go of the memories: bent over the pages in Hawke’s house, amid the smell of paper and wet Mabari and the lavender soap she used to favor.  He missed her still, missed all they had been to each other as much as all they might have been.

“Who, _Solas_?” Varric asked, pulling him from reverie. “I – well, he’s been involved with it, but I don’t think you’d like his books.”

Fenris blinked. “It’s a very big library,” he said. “Surely there’s something.”

“I can have a look around, I guess, if you like,” Varric said. “Seriously, though, I wouldn’t ask Solas. You want to get in a fight, go line up with Cassandra again.”

“Would you like to make sense at any point?” Fenris asked, and almost flinched at the echo of Hawke in his own voice.

“Well, he’s an apostate,” Varric said. “Makes Merrill look downright paranoid about spirits, too, and I don’t think he’d like having his books thrown across the room. Hey, if he’s back, Adaar must be – she’s pretty busy, but I can wrangle an introduction if you want, and you might like the Bull. Just don’t ask him about the Qun, it’s a sensitive subject lately.”

“You know,” Fenris said, “I do remember what you sound like when you’re trying to change the subject.”

Varric rubbed at the back of his head. “You could stand to be a little more forgetful.”

“I do not need to be _protected_ from apostates,” Fenris snapped, folding his arms.

“Well, it’s a good thing that’s not what I’m doing, then,” Varric said. “Look, Fenris, let’s just let it go. Ruffles has enough to do without you getting into fights. Skyhold’s full of people; you might even like some of them. Solas isn’t the official librarian anyway, you can look around on your own if you want.”

Fenris opened his mouth around bristling injured fury, and stopped himself; Varric had shoved his hands deep into his pockets, distance in his face again. “I’m not going to rip his heart out in the middle of the courtyard, Varric,” he bit out; it was a more necessary promise than he liked to admit.

“I don’t know, he takes a fight if you offer one,” Varric said. “Sometimes he starts one.”

“Do you want my pledge of good behavior?” Fenris demanded. And why was he still arguing, anyway? He’d no particular urge to introduce himself to this Solas, had had no more than a passing wish for the books. He didn’t seek out even companionship of the like-minded, never mind those with whom he would doubtless disagree. And yet a memory stirred, unbidden: _“What has magic touched that it doesn’t spoil?”_ and Hawke’s half-stifled flinch, her slow step back – not as if she were afraid, but as if he wouldn’t want her near. Her hand falling from his shoulder as he stepped away, and the jolt of wanting, under the anger and the fear, for her to reach for him again. He wasn’t _incapable_ of civility, only rarely inclined to it. _People don’t make that kind of offer when they have something to go back to._  

“Do I look like a parole officer?” Varric asked.

“Not really, no.” Fenris sighed. “Forget I said anything. You were discussing a bog?”

Varric had been, and that rant carried them back to safer waters, but it was with a sting of resentful guilt lodged under Fenris’s ribs that he made his way to the Herald’s Rest that night. Perhaps that was even what drove him there, though he knew Varric was likely to be busy elsewhere – with the Inquisitor, most like, discussing some business of their own.

It was smoky in the tavern, and dark, though the music was an improvement on the Hanged Man. The wine was about the same. Fenris leaned against the corner by the stairs, taking a moment to appreciate the minstrel’s song. _Once we sat / in the light of our dreams / once we were / in our homeland / with strength and might / once we were / not afraid of the night…_ She trailed off; a few people clapped, and Fenris joined by token.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” said a voice by Fenris’s ear. “I mean – it! The music! The music is beautiful.”

Fenris resisted the urge to snort. “I suppose,” he said. The speaker was a fresh-faced young man in well-used armor, red hair cropped short on the sides.

“My name’s Krem,” he said. “Cremisius Aclassi. You any good with that sword?”

“Good enough,” Fenris said, and accepted the offered handshake. _Aclassi._ “Tevinter?”

“Born and raised,” the boy – man – Krem said, folding his arms. “Going to be a problem? The Inquisitor’s got no problem with it, nor does the chief.” Fenris caught a familiar accent in his voice, echoed in his bearing: soporati, of some level or another.

“I’m from there myself,” Fenris said. “Though I’ve no intention of going back alive.” That usually got across as much of his story as he wanted to tell.

“Ahh,” Krem said. “Nor have I, come to that. They’ve a deserter’s end waiting for me.” He shrugged. “Share another drink? The beer’s… well, it’s good enough.”

“I’ll stick to wine,” Fenris said, lifting his glass. “But… yes. I’m Fenris.”

“I’ll get a bottle,” Krem said. “Chief hasn’t noticed I’m on his tab yet, so it’s on me.” He led Fenris to a table by the bar, kicking a chair to a sideways angle. Fenris tracked the sight lines from there to the minstrel and muffled his amusement, though Krem had also given himself a decent view of the door.  And set Fenris’s back to it, but Fenris was still quick enough off the mark, and no one had caused him trouble in the Rest yet. He took the seat, crushing his misgivings.

“So,” Krem said, propping his elbows on the table, “that sword of yours. I’m a maul man, myself, but I can make do with most of the heavier weapons. What do you favor?”

They were deep into a technical discussion, having jointly agreed that axes were a waste of everyone’s time, when footsteps crossed Fenris’s awareness and someone called, “Krem! Hello, hello. And how is the dreadful beer today?”

“Oh, hey Dorian,” Krem said. “No idea where the Chief’s at, before you ask. And we’re drinking wine, I’ll have you know.”

“ _Wine?_ I didn’t know they served that, here. Come on, share the wealth,” apparently-Dorian said, grabbing a chair, and Fenris froze at the sight of samite white. Apparently-Dorian had an absurd mustache, an unmistakable staff slung over his back, and the layered robes of the wealthiest snakes in the Magisterium.

“Fenris, this is Dorian,” Krem said, “Dorian, Fenris.”

“What’s a _magister_ doing in the Inquisition?” Fenris asked, shifting his chair back to give him space to swing.  Dorian the magister rolled his eyes.

“I am _not_ a magister –”

“An altus, then,” Fenris snapped. “You must be, in those robes. Is the Inquisitor all right with this?” He glanced at Krem.

“I’d hardly be here if she weren’t,” Dorian snapped. “I’m not on terms with my family, anyhow. Charming company you have here, Krem.”

“He was fine ‘till you showed up,” Krem said, tilting his chair back in pointed relaxation. “Can you blame him, really? All of us down at your feet, licking boots – we get sick of it.” He said it amiably, as if they could all laugh about it.

“And yet here you are drinking with him,” Fenris said, fighting the itching burn of the lyrium that longed to flare through him and reach through Dorian’s heart, or at the very least to break for the door. “Cozying up for a trip back home?”

“Do you always insult a man while you’re drinking his wine?” Krem asked. “Dorian’s a friend. We’ve worked it out.”

“Technically speaking, I believe it’s the Bull’s wine,” Dorian added, “yes, don’t think I haven’t noticed, and I guarantee you that if I’ve noticed so has he –”

“I suppose you were free,” Fenris cut across him, curling his lip. “I’d imagine that makes it easy to _work it out._ ”

“I’m free, yes,” Krem said, letting his chair fall to the floor with a thump. “My father isn’t. You’ve every right to be angry, but I’ll thank you to leave me out of it. I’ll take my friends where I find them, and make my peace or not without your copper’s worth.” He met Fenris’s glare calmly, his jaw set; Fenris shifted in his seat, faintly abashed. Dorian cleared his throat.

“You were a slave, then?” he asked Fenris, into the silence.

“You’re a clever one,” Fenris said.

“Well.” Dorian cleared his throat. “My… apologies, I suppose.”

“Your _apologies?”_ Fenris had thought, often, of magisters, especially those first years of his freedom in Kirkwall; of heads cut off and ribs laid open. As time passed, and imagined deaths and real ones failed to loosen the knot in his back or do anything to ease his sleep, he’d thought of other things: dragging Danarius to the slave pens and shoving his face in the filthy dirt until he begged for mercy, clapping Hadriana in irons and dangling food out of her reach until she wept in contrition. He hadn’t liked the fantasies, but he had turned them over again and again in the dark, like tracing the shape of a half-healed wound. Never once had he imagined a well-dressed magister with ridiculous hair would apologize to him, unprompted, for his slavery, as if it were a, a –

“You didn’t spill wine on me at a party,” he said. “Do you think your _apologies_ can make up for the loss of my freedom, my childhood – more of my life than I could even begin to know?”

“Since you ask, no, I don’t,” Dorian said, reaching for the wine. Fenris grabbed for it; Krem rolled his eyes, shifting back – giving himself space to get between them if he needed. Dorian only sighed and glanced past Fenris’s shoulder, waving offhand to the bartender. “It didn’t seem exactly _appropriate_ to say nothing, however,” he continued. “Should I have just let it sit there? You clearly resent me. I’m hardly going to blame you for it. Tevinter’s a ghastly mess, and I got to ride that particular dragon while all the shit landed on you. I don’t know that I’d drink with me either, in your position.”

“Got your usual here, Dorian,” one of the barmaids interrupted them, clunking a tankard onto the table. “More wine, ser?” It took Fenris a blink to realize she meant him.

“I’ve enough,” he said.

“Thank you, Kathryn,” Dorian said, “and, you know, I may just take this and go, you may be assured I’ll bring back the tankard –”

“C’mon, Dorian –” Krem said, catching at his elbow as Dorian half-stood, and they ended in an uncertain balance, Dorian hanging on to the edge of the table. He looked to Fenris, clearly waiting to be bid to go or stay.

Once, in the last year in Kirkwall, Fenris and Merrill and Aveline accompanied Hawke home. They saw her to her door, and Aveline cut uphill towards the keep and the barracks, leaving Fenris and Merrill picking their way across the square under the scudding moonlit clouds.

“Fenris?” Merrill asked, tilting her head back to look at the sky. Some days he suspected they were of an age, though she’d never mentioned her age and he didn’t know his own; then she did something like this and seemed younger than he’d ever been.

“What?” he snapped.

“Do you think you’re always going to hate me?”

“Are you always going to be a blood mage?” he asked. She flinched, distinct in the full moon.

“I’ve never hurt anyone but myself,” she said. “I’m not an abomination. I’ve spoken to demons – do you ever think, if it were going to happen, it would have happened by now? It’s been so many years.”

“Are you sure you’ve never come close?” he asked. “And who will pay the price, if it happens?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I have. Are you sure you’ve never done anything stupid, anything that hurt people? Are you sure you never will?”

“It’s not the same,” he bit out.

“Maybe not. But I’ve never done anything to you except help kill the people who tried to hurt you, and I don’t think I’ve ever given you any reason to believe I will. Not really. Nothing except that I’m a mage, and I can’t help that. I can’t be anything less than I am, any more than you can help being grumpy or good with a sword or take that lyrium out of yourself. You’ve hated me for more than six years because of something I _might_ do. Because you’re convinced I will. As if only mages are ever tempted, or ever hurt people just because it’s easy.”

“When a mage gives in –”

“Oh, stop,” Merrill interrupted. “I’ve heard it all already, Fenris, and not just from you. All my life. I just wanted to know – do you think I could ever convince you that I might not hurt you? Do you think you could ever stand me?”

“I…” Fenris stopped, mouth dry. Merrill sighed and looked away, running her fingers over her necklace. Her fine bright chainmail caught the moon.

“I have wondered if it’s because of her, you know,” she said. “If it’s because she’s with me. But you hated me long before that, didn’t you? And we’re all a little bit in love with her, I think, all six of us, and none of the others hate me like you do. She chose you first, even. Although I suppose maybe that makes it worse.”

Fenris tried to speak and tried again. “Don’t,” he finally managed. “Don’t – ever. I don’t want to –”

“And now I _have_ hurt you,” Merrill said miserably. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with me being a mage, although I don’t suppose that matters –”

“Doesn’t it?” His voice cracked; he turned away, glaring down at the moon-washed cobble.

“No,” Merrill said behind him, steadfast and sure. “No, it doesn’t. And I think you know that, Fenris, because I know you, and you’re not that stupid. She likes me because she thinks I’m clever and funny, and I interest her, and I don’t give up when something terrible happens. And you’re all of those things too, so I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but it’s not because we’re mages and you’re not. And if you’re telling yourself that, you’re wrong, and you’re not being fair to any of us.”

“I’ll… see you when Hawke calls us,” Fenris choked out, and all but fled into the shadows of Kirkwall.

A strange memory, to come to him in the Herald’s Rest, staring down a Tevinter magister. Whatever Merrill had or hadn’t grown up hearing, Altus Dorian Something-or-other had been stuffed fat with tales of his own importance all his golden life. And Dorian was a stranger, not the chosen companion of the woman Fenris loved above all else in the world. He didn’t even look like Merrill. And yet Fenris found himself saying, “There’s no need. Stay.”

“Well,” Dorian said, dropping back. “Thank you, I suppose.”

“Mm.” Fenris took another swig from his wine: sour and cheap.

“So,” Krem said into the silence. “Not to poke at an old wound, but, Fenris, were you born in slavery then? I figured you for Dalish, and that you’d been caught and got away again. What with the tattoos, and everything.”

“Ah. No,” Fenris said. “No, they’re a gift of the magister who owned me. Quite valuable, too.”

Krem made a noise of commiserative disgust. “Decorative, eh?”

“Experimental,” Fenris said, holding up a hand. He hadn’t discussed them in years; hadn’t expected to again, but somehow it was easier now. Probably a legacy of Isabela cracking jokes about lyrium breasts; for a while, they’d been simply a part of his life, however tender. “Magical, even.”

Dorian sprayed beer halfway across the table, spattering Fenris’s arms and a decent part of Krem’s shirt.

“Fuck my tongue out with a dragon’s cock,” he said in Tevene, over Krem’s yelp. In Common: “You’re _Danarius’s –”_ Fenris glared “—ah, victim?”

 “I’m not his _victim,_ ” Fenris said, wiping beer and spittle off onto his trousers with equal distaste for the conversation and the spray. “I had the pleasure of killing him a few years ago.” It hadn’t helped as he had hoped, but there was a bitter satisfaction to the memory still. Whatever the worth of justice, something like it had been done.

“Wonderful,” Dorian said, with sincere warmth. “All of Thedas is wiser and kinder, as a whole. Not that you need me to tell you that, of all people, but this is the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“You knew him?” Fenris asked, startled.

“By reputation, mainly,” Dorian said. “I believe we met once or twice. In other circumstances I’d offer to buy you a drink for it, but I’d hate for you to take it the wrong way.”

“I certainly didn’t kill him for your convenience,” Fenris said, and was surprised at the easy dryness in his own voice. Dorian laughed.

“Well, then, I won’t offer,” he said. “Which is entirely due to tact on my part, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Varric winning eight sovereigns and seventy-nine silver off of me the other night.”

“You can gamble with that kind of money and don’t have change for the drinks?” Fenris asked.

“I had _four dragons_ in my hand _,”_ Dorian said. “I’d accuse him of making up regional variants purely to swindle me, but everyone else at the table seems to think he’s talking sense.”

“Depends on who else is at the table,” Fenris said. Dorian and Krem both laughed, and Fenris took another pull of his wine to cover the dizzying feeling of the floor falling out from under his feet. Here he was, at what seemed to him the far south ass-end of the world, sharing drinks and laughter with a Tevinter freeman and a _magister’s heir._

“So how _does_ an altus end up with the Inquisition?” Fenris asked, suspicious still, but it wasn’t his Inquisition, or any business of his beyond that Varric was bound up in it.

“Oh, well,” Dorian said. “A little bit of social exile, an old mentor going round the twist, some faint stirrings of conscience, a conveniently timed ship, and here we are. Almost inevitable, really.”

“Dorian talks a lot of nonsense,” Krem interrupted, holding out his own glass. “And share some of that wine, will you?” Fenris complied. “No, Dorian got the chief and the Inquisitor out of a real tough spot a few months ago,” Krem continued. “Above my pay grade, mind, but it was Tethras and the two of them, and a right mess out in Redcliffe. Apparently we might all be dead by now if he hadn’t saved the day.”

“Really.” Fenris eyed Dorian with a sliver of – not respect, exactly. But Varric’s life was worth something, however much Fenris believed about the rest of Thedas or the Inquisition.

“Oh, well, it was my master’s mess,” Dorian said. “Ugly, sordid story, very uncomfortable. Very boring. But I made a friend out of it, so perhaps that awful cliché about bright sides has something to it.”

“A _friend,_ huh,” Krem says, grinning.

“I meant Lady Adaar, I’ll have you know,” Dorian said loftily, turning up his nose.

“Too good to be friends with mercenaries, then?” Fenris asked, eyeing this snobbery with renewed suspicion. Krem looked faintly stifled, hiding his face in his drink.

“I’m drinking with one, aren’t I?” Dorian asked. “Or possibly two, going by that sword of yours. Come to that, Lady Adaar was a mercenary herself.”

“I’m not,” Fenris said. “I’m…” Well, technically, a bandit and a vagabond, but he took some pride in what he’d done. A Kirkwall child who he’d brought back from slavers had cried on his shoulder – he’d held himself still with his skin twitching – and brought him a twig clustered in pale blue flowers. He still had it, pressed flat between stones and tucked in a scrap of cloth the bottom of his pack. “I’ve been with refugees in the north,” he said.

“Ah, a _charity_ mercenary,” Dorian said. “Admirable! Watch out, or the Inquisitor will have you following her around every bog in the world’s coldest countries.”

“It is rather cold,” Fenris granted. Kirkwall had been the coldest place of his life, until the long road up the Frostback slopes, wind filling his face with flakes of snow that cut like shards of glass.

“Thank you!” Dorian said, gesturing expansively. “No one else understands. Even the Bull can stand it somehow.”

“This doesn’t make us friends,” Fenris clarified.

“I’ll take acquaintances who understand about reasonable temperatures,” Dorian said, and took another sip of his beer. “Maker, this doesn’t get any better.”

“Neither does the wine,” Fenris said, testing it. It didn’t. “You know, you didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“How does an altus end up in the south fighting against the glory of Tevinter and making inadequate apologies to former slaves?”

“Oh, asking the easy questions,” Dorian said, swirling the beer in his cup.

“You know I was a slave,” Fenris pointed out. “You know what Danarius did to me. Have I less right to know what happened to you?” Krem grimaced, propping his chin on one hand.

“Fair enough,” Dorian sighed. “It’s not much of a tale, I’m afraid. My family are reformists, for what that’s worth – my father is Magister Pavus?” He raised an eyebrow; Fenris shook his head.

“Danarius’s uses for me weren’t political,” he said. “And I don’t care what the magisters do to each other.”

“I suppose I can’t argue,” Dorian said. “Well, my father was a great believer in justice and improving society and not running off to blood magic and ritual sacrifice for every trivial little inconvenience, which all made a great deal of sense to me. And then it turned out you just run off to use blood magic for the really _big_ inconveniences, like a recalcitrant son.” He sighed. “He did seem to intend to use his own blood, so I suppose he wasn’t planning to _completely_ compromise his principles over me. That’s something, I suppose.”

“Hmph. Magisters.” It was reflexive, like reaching for his sword at a flicker of movement in the dark; Dorian didn’t contradict him. “What…” He made the effort to pick his words, thinking again of Merrill in the moonlight and the ghosts in Varric’s face. “How did he come to be so desperate?”

“I rudely insisted on preferring men,” Dorian said. “To the exclusion of all usefulness, like siring another Pavus. It turns out with the right ritual, one can have a perfectly normal heir again! Or a drooling vegetable with less thought than an infant, but what can one do? One might be stuck with a freak of nature, happily buggering willing people all across town.”

“Ah,” Krem said. “I’m sorry, Dorian. Family’s tough.”

Fenris tried to answer, couldn’t. Varania, taking his money to board a ship, staring wide-eyed up at him as Danarius’s footsteps echoed on the stair. Her shadow vanishing out the door of the Hanged Man, and Varric’s voice shaking: _Fenris. It won’t help._ Varric starting to tell a story about Bartrand over a game of Wicked Grace; breaking off in the middle and folding on an easy hand. Hawke’s shaking hands, her flimsy laughter, as she told them about Carver joining the Templars. _At least he didn’t tell them about me – it was quite the welcome-home surprise, you know, we certainly fought like cats in a sack but I thought we’d made our peace –_

He could blame it on magic. Would have, once. But Bartrand was no mage, nor Varric; and for all Fenris’s own lack of magic, he too had walked away from Hawke – once in her bedroom, once after Kirkwall burned. She had stood by him.

Fenris sighed and pushed the wine bottle towards Dorian. “Here,” he said. “That needs a drink.”

“…Thank you,” Dorian said, looking at him. “I quite agree.” He sloshed the wine into his tankard – empty, Fenris could only assume – and passed the bottle back. “A toast,” he suggested. “To… I don’t know. To better families.”

“Life after Tevinter,” Fenris suggested.

“I’ll drink to both,” Krem said, clunking his tankard against theirs. “Oh, and there’s Chief – get him over and we can stand in a circle and drink to peace in the north.” He waved.

“And what do you mean by –” Fenris started, glancing up from his hands, and caught sight of the tallest Qunari man he’d ever seen, up to and including the Kirkwall Arishok. “Oh.”

Krem laughed. “Yeah, that’s the chief,” he said. “Iron Bull of the Bull’s Chargers. We’ve got our own little Seheron, without all the death.”

“We’re short a fog warrior,” Fenris said. Iron Bull swung another chair around to their table, nudging it between Krem and Dorian, though Fenris shifted aside to make room. Dorian was the only one in their group who didn’t think twice about having his back to the door, Fenris noted with grim amusement. And then another motive became clear, along with several other parts of the conversation, as Iron Bull slung an arm over Dorian’s shoulders and dropped a kiss to the top of his hair. Dorian leaned back into the curve of Bull’s arm, smile playing around the corners of his mouth; then he caught Fenris’s eye and the smile vanished. He tilted his chin up, all defiance; familiar, somehow, though Fenris couldn’t place the gesture.

“I don’t care what you do together, Pavus,” Fenris said. Maker preserve him, a magister looking to him in fear of censure. Not since he’d left Hawke had his world been so set on its ear. “I’m not one to kick a man out of bed either, and even if I weren’t, if he comes to you freely then I have better things to worry about.” He rarely let anyone get as far as his bed in the first place, in all honesty; too much pain weighed against too little pleasure. But he’d let his eyes linger on Varric as much as on Hawke or Isabela, in Kirkwall, and since then he’d glanced at a few men with broad strong hands and low smiles as he’d glanced at a few dark-haired women with confident strides. Looked, and thought _in another life…_

Iron Bull laughed, a low deep rumble. “Oh, I come freely, all right,” he said, leaning his chin on Dorian’s head. Dorian flushed deep brown, swatting at his companion’s arm.

“Terrible,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Don’t worry,” Krem said, smirking, “the rest of us have a pretty good idea.”

Dorian’s flush deepened; Fenris joined Krem’s and Bull’s laughter and took another pull from his wine.

“So, Chief,” Krem said, grinning. “Before Dorian got here, Fenris and I were just talking about what kind of idiot you’d have to be to favor a greataxe.”

“Oh, fuck, not this again,” Bull groaned. “Just because you don’t appreciate a good edge –”

“Fenris here is a sword man,” Krem interrupted, radiating smugness. “Wrong, of course, but he’s with me on this. There’s no good reason to take all the weaknesses of both weapons –”

“Which isn’t what a greataxe does –”

Battle, heated and enjoyable, was joined. Dorian weighed in on every side at different moments, mainly commenting on the relative dignity and aesthetics of each weapon.

“They’re not there to look _pretty_ ,” Fenris griped at him, after the third time.

“Oh, but if you _can_ look magnificent while you kill demons and lunatics, why wouldn’t you?”

“In that case,” Bull said, “I get to bring up that the boss had Dagna put together a dawnstone axe for me, and it’s the prettiest damn thing –”

“That’s _one_ axe,” Krem cut in, “not axes in general, and I’m sure the crazy smith could make you a pink maul if you wanted one, you giant idiot –”

At some point in the argument, another bottle of wine made its way to them; at some point, Dorian peeled off the wrappings of his arms, revealing cords of undeniably practical muscle that reminded Fenris of Isabela. At another point, Krem tried to deflect the heat of battle by accusing shield-users of weakness, and Iron Bull leaped in to defend Seeker Pentaghast at the same time as Fenris defended the absent Aveline.

It was late in the evening when Fenris heard footsteps approaching, ignored the intruder as nonthreatening, and was forced to re-evaluate when Varric said, “Holy shit,” loud enough to catch the whole table’s attention. Krem broke off mid-word, looking at him.

“Hey, Varric,” Bull said. “Grab a chair?”

“Hey, Bull,” Varric said, not moving. “Hey, broody elf. Everyone, uh, make their introductions?”

“We did,” Fenris said, ignoring the prickling on the back of his neck. Part of him wanted to leap away from the table as if he’d been caught in some transgression, some betrayal of his past; another wanted to defend himself, to say _I can be civil if I choose; I didn’t choose, but look, see, today I did._ A third part simply enjoyed the look of complete befuddlement on Varric’s face, and after a teetering moment, Fenris chose to take the joy where he found it. “We’ve been here since dusk.”

“Well, shit,” Varric repeated, shaking his head, but he did grab a chair this time. “Maybe I should stay off the beer tonight.”

“It’s unusually gritty,” Dorian reported.

“Oooh, I like gritty,” Varric said. “Is it watery, too? It’ll be like being home.”

“Water might help,” Dorian said.

“You could have wine,” Fenris offered. “It’s not any better.”

“Never is, my friend.” Varric eyed him sidelong. “So, just to be clear, we’ve mentioned this is Dorian Pavus, right? Not a magister of the Tevinter Imperium on a technicality?”

“It’s not a _technicality_ –” Dorian said, just as Fenris said, “Is _yet_ a technicality?”

“I’m sure he’s gotten around to disinheriting me by now, anyway,” Dorian said, and stole Bull’s beer.

“You think I can’t recognize an altus when one walks up to me in a bar?” Fenris asked.

“Is that just something that happens to you now?” Varric asked, pulling out a deck of cards. Dorian threw up his hands in self-defense, but Varric only shuffled it as he talked, a habit Fenris recognized from Kirkwall. Varric used to shuffle packs for hours as he spoke, cutting and recutting when he needed time to think. “Magisters’ heirs walk up to you in bars and you sit there and share a drink? Did you get hit in the head a few dozen times? Maybe wander too near a Fade rift?”

Fenris couldn’t hold back his shudder at that. “No,” he said.  He didn’t want to explain his own weariness, or the underlying urge to push his own capacity in the same way he used to strain over an intimidating tangle of letters, attempting it less to know what it said than to discover whether he could read it. “Are you going to deal those cards?” he asked.

“Oh, shit, Wicked Grace?” Bull asked. “I’ve got some coin.” He rummaged in a pocket, nudging Dorian aside easily.

“And here I thought we’d reached a nice little truce,” Dorian said to Fenris. “Cordiality, even. No, it was all a long game; you want me naked and dead.”

“Everyone wants you naked,” Bull said, making Krem cough into his beer.

 “I’ll leave that to you,” Fenris said, raising his eyebrows, and raked closer the cards Varric offered. “We could play diamondback, I suppose.”

“Oooh, he really doesn’t like you,” Varric said. “He’s actually good at diamondback.”

“This is easily the kindest way I’ve tried to take the wealth of a magister’s house,” Fenris said.

“You can try for my shirt,” Dorian said. “And a part of whatever share the Inquisitor gives me of the recent spoils. So I hope you have a use for seven or eight bushels of elfroot.”

“I do not,” Fenris said, and turned over his cards.

He shortly discovered that Krem and Iron Bull had played together at least as often as Fenris and Varric, without a three-year span apart from each other, and that Bull had a better eye than Varric for both card-counting and tells. Still, Fenris managed to hang on to the bulk of his purse without having to bow out of the game. By the time that he and Varric left, wine-loosened and Varric somewhat enriched, the moon was high over the mountains, bathing the world in white.

“So, Fenris,” Varric said, as they picked their way across the mud-strewn courtyard toward the kitchen door. “Seriously. What was that?”

“What was what?” Fenris asked. “I’m out of practice.”

“Your little Tevinter reunion in there,” Varric said. “I’ll be honest, broody, I figured if you and Dorian ran into each other someone was going to have to pull you off him. He’s a genuine magister, bred and born, and he’s…” Varric whistled. “He doesn’t have much good to say about Tevinter once you pin him down, but he takes some pinning. And I can’t picture him apologizing for having magic. So what’s the story?” He paused. “Also, I’ve seen some of the other mages almost smack him too.”

Fenris scrubbed a hand through his hair, considered deflecting. But this was Varric, who knew him better than anyone but Hawke; Varric, who was all tangled up in the answer. “What you said when I first arrived,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of it. I’ve tried to believe regret is pointless, or I might drown in it, but sometimes…” He grimaced. “A great many things might be different now, if I had…” The words clustered choking in his mouth, burning and proud; he swallowed hard. “Apportioned blame differently for a few things. And been a little less wary. Of magic.”

“Shit.” Varric whistled. “Six years in Kirkwall and you never budged. I have to be honest, I never thought I’d see the day.”

“I suppose distance can alter one’s view of things,” Fenris said. “And… whether or not anything would be different now…” He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. “I hurt Hawke. More than once, and… I think worse than I knew. Of all the things in the world I never wanted…” He shrugged.

“Ahh,” Varric said. They’d both come to a stop by now, under the vast shadow of the ramp to the Great Hall; he leaned against the stone, running his finger over his lips. “All right. I guess I follow.”

“I’ve put her over my feelings on magic before,” Fenris said. “Often.” He’d fought at her side in the Gallows, spellfire flying past him on every side. “She is as rare a mage as she is a woman, but I held her magic against her as much as I ever did Anders or Merrill. She simply… overwhelmed my reservations.”

“She was overwhelming,” Varric said softly. Fenris hadn’t read all of _Tale of the Champion,_ not wanting the painful wash of memory that every page brought back, but he’d read enough. If Varric had exaggerated what Hawke had done – and he had – it was only because he had believed that she was that extraordinary.

“If I _hadn’t_ held it against her, then perhaps…” Fenris said. It was possible nothing would be different; it had terrified him, the intensity of what he’d felt in her arms, the wash of memory and joy, the loss of all that once had been and the prospect of someday losing all that could yet come to be. Perhaps he would have left her regardless. But he could not imagine but that she’d wondered if her magic was what stood between them – and it had been part of it – and that too must ached for her. And he had been used to jumping in front of arrows to save her a physical pain that she could, with a minute’s effort, wash away.

“All right,” Varric said, and folded his arms. “So, that would all make sense if I’d found you talking with, I don’t know, Minaeve, or Solas, or Madame de Fer – you know, any other mage in the Inquisition. But _Dorian?”_

“What do you think I’m hiding?” Fenris demanded, rubbing one achingly cold foot against his other ankle. “Krem offered me a drink. Dorian was the one who joined us. Krem vouched for him, which counted for something – most of the soporati don’t think much of the magisters either.” Varric eyed him, waiting for the rest, and Fenris sighed. “And I suppose I thought… I don’t know. If this is possible, what else might be?”

“Ahh,” Varric said, relaxing. “Well. I follow you there.” He pushed himself away from the wall, shrugging. “Have you been thinking any more about going north?”

“No,” Fenris said, and then, discovering it, “Yes, I suppose I have. I may. However things stand at Weisshaupt, I may be of some use. And… it would be good to see her again.” He licked his lips. “To see all three of them again.”

“Good,” Varric said. “I made a promise to stick with the Inquisition, but I didn’t like letting her go alone. She could do it if anyone could, but she needs people to watch her back.”

“Maker knows she was never good at it,” Fenris said, and got a smile. “Another few days will make no difference, I think, but… yes. I think I should go.”

The conviction only strengthened over the next few days. When he left Skyhold, it was with a jangling purse and several packets of elfroot won off a magister, a parcel of letters from Varric to Hawke and her people, another letter from the Inquisitor, and an injunction from Krem to try a maul for a while, which Fenris fully intended to ignore. For all the briefness of his time there, it was a heavier and happier burden than he’d carried away from anywhere in… all his memory, actually, searching back.

He almost abandoned the long slog north, more than once. Hawke was several weeks ahead, her road uncertain; he might wander for months and never catch her. And yet he kept following, and in time his questions at inns and taverns – “A human mage, a dark-haired woman, travelling alone, or with her brother or a Dalish woman” – began to be answered with “Oh, yes, we saw them. Name of Byrd?” which nearly made him choke and left one tavern-keeper thinking him utterly out of his mind.

And then it was “Oh, yes, just last week –” “Just the other day –” “Just last night.” He barely slept that night, and was out of bed by the first dim light of morning, only to drag his feet on the road. What if it wasn’t her? How would he explain why he’d come? What if she no longer wanted –

And then he came over the crest of the hill in the full spring sunlight and saw two figures below, two dark heads, two staffs slung over their backs. He took a deep slow breath, let it out, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Hallo, travelers!” he called, letting his voice boom across the valley. Below, they turned, Merrill unslinging her staff, Hawke lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the golden glare of the sun. He waved a greeting, brief and awkward, and suddenly he was loping down the hill, only keeping himself from running because the light was at his back, hiding his face, and he had no desire to take a conjured boulder to the chest or have his blood pulled out from his veins.

“Do I know – _Andraste’s ass,”_ Hawke swore, dropping her staff. “ _Fenris?”_

“Hawke,” he said, coming to a stop a few steps back. Her clothes hung loose over her old muscle; she had deeper lines by her mouth and streaks of grey in the longer-now fall of her hair. The wind of the Anderfells had roughened her skin, and she had new scars on the back of her arm, and he could have stood there for an hour only drinking in the sight of her.

“Fenris!” Merrill said, and Fenris forced himself to turn and look at her as well. She had lost weight, too; she wore two ragged shawls clutched close around her, but her forearms were bare, and he could still see the ragged scars reaching up and down the skin: pale beside half-healed beside fresh, thicker on the skin than he remembered them. “Oh, I’m so pleased you’re not dead.”

It was Merrill, and ordinary for her; still he blinked. “Was this in doubt?”

“Well, there was all kinds of trouble, since Kirkwall, and no one had heard from you,” she said, and clapped her hands together. “We both worried. It really is good to see you.”

“Ah.” He coughed. “Thank you. Er… you look well.”

“She’s not an abomination or anything!” Hawke chirped. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, and Fenris looked at her and heard _“Neither am I!”_ so clearly she almost might have spoken it. Varric had been right, or close enough. 

“I noticed,” he said, and swallowed hard. He might say this partly for Hawke’s sake, but it was also for himself, and it wasn’t to her that he needed to say it. He met Merrill’s gaze and made an effort to smile. “I’m happy to see it.”

Her eyes went wide. “You know, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He winced, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, that sounded so angry! And maybe I’m a little angry. But you know, really, I’m just glad. I missed you too, you know.”

“So did I,” Hawke said, softly. Fenris allowed himself to look at her again; her eyes were shining, the corners of her lips quirked up. “Did Varric send you?”

“In a roundabout way,” he said. “I thought you might need my help.”

“We can certainly use it,” she said. “Thank you for coming.” She reached out, took his hand and squeezed it quickly before she let him go.

“Of course,” he said. “I missed you too.” It was easier to say than he’d expected; but then, if she didn’t already know, he’d failed her worse than he’d ever imagined. By the brightening of her smile, she knew, but saying it mattered.

“Carver sent a bird to us at the last town,” she said. “He’ll be meeting us in a couple of days, most likely. You know, here I’d thought I might have to storm Weisshaupt alone.”

“Never,” Merrill said immediately, grabbing for her hand. It hurt, but it was only a shallow ache next to the joy stirring in him.

“Never,” he echoed.

“Then we’re practically invincible,” she said, and it was a lie, a beautiful lie, or they would all still be in Kirkwall – and yet, they’d lived, and here they were. And Fenris was smiling, and when Merrill caught his eye and smiled back, it didn’t slip away.


End file.
